Every now and then I get the feeling that some folks -- some of whom may have just joined the program already in progress -- are honestly puzzled by what a number of us might have against Wikipedia. By way of answering the question Where's the Beef? I intend to collect here, in a compact form suitable for easy reference -- you might even say a Compendium -- some of the more salient complaints.

Bill of Particulars:

1. I accuse Wikipedia of spawning a half-generation of pathologically diss-socialized internet skinheads.
   1. 
   2. 
2. I accuse Wikipedia of perverting the meanings of our most cherished and crucial concepts, to the point where they cease to have any practical meaning at all, not within the Wikipedia context and not among those who fall under its influence. For example:
   1. Accuracy
   2. Authority
   3. Balance
   4. Biography
   5. Civility
   6. Collaboration
   7. Community
   8. Consensus
   9. Encyclopedia
   10. Equity
   11. Impartiality
   12. Knowledge
   13. Meaning
   14. Neutrality
   15. Notability
   16. Openness
   17. Originality
   18. Policy
   19. Populism
   20. Privacy
   21. Quality
   22. Reliability
   23. Responsibility
   24. Significance
   25. Transparency
   26. Verfiability
   27. ...
3. ...

Further below, I will elaborate as necessary on the charges to be enumerated here.

Jonny

Some people just innately criticize their existential-social matrix from the time that they are conceived in its womb. They cannot consider established ways of doing things without considering alternatives to them. Something in their stars impells them to think that conceiving otherness is the very meaning of the word consideration. That is why we are constantly trying out each new pathway that appears off the pike of establishment ways, and that is why we are constantly being suckered into the usual proportion of dead ends to nowhere. What the heck, we are used to that, and it's simply a matter of tracking back to the last good road and hitting the trail again.

C'est la vie. Nothing is lost but time and energy. But being mortal, none of us wants to waste more chunks of our life on dead end directions than we absolutely have to. So a moment of post mortem examination is not a bad idea if we want to make new mistakes instead of always getting bogged down in the same old ruts.

And all of that adds up to one of the reasons that I find my experience of Wikipedia to be so distressing that it literally -- and why do we say literally when we really mean figuratively? -- makes my blood boil. Because Wikipedia is not just radically miseducating a hive full of impressionable people about the kinds of knowledge and skills that are necessary to function in civilized society, but it is blowing a chance that we might have had to eke out a few genuine improvements to the established ways of doing things.

Jonny

This is contradicted by God's word, to wit, Isreal in the Wilderness. Isreal, after ( a ) witnessing who God was and his mighty power; ( b ) seeing the plagues of Eygpt descend upon thier enemies and oppressors at God's hand; ( c ) having been spared same because of God's mighty power and favoritism; ( d ) having been protected by God and his mighty power when he (i) parted the Sea; (ii) destroyed thier enemies when the Sea resceeded; ( e ) experienced God's mighty power & compassion when he fed them in the Wilderness with manna, nevertheless, still willfully chose to bow down and worship the golden calf, and were confined to forty years Wandering with thier mortal carcasses eventually collapsing in the Wilderness.

So as to the premise, "being mortal, none of us wants to waste more chunks of our life on dead end directions than we absolutely have to", I would say it is contradicted by the teachings regarding Human Nature that we all are heirs of.

With respect, the forty years in the wilderness was nothing to do with the sin of the Golden Calf. See Numbers chapter 14 for the correct reason.

Point of Clarification. I meant, of course, to say:


Jonny

Yes indeed. The cite you provided supports the aforementioned contention. To wit,
andNumbers 14 is the Finding of Fact, the last straw in God's infinite patience, with the Remedy, i.e. wandering in the wilderness til thier carcases collapse.

The proper naming convention would be "Rebellion" which would consist of ( a ) murmurings; ( b ) worshiping the golden calf; ( c ) incident at Kadesh in Numbers 20; ( d ) other incidents.

No, He lost patience with them because all those men who had seen his glory, and his miracles, which he did in Egypt and in the wilderness, i.e. after the sin of the Golden Calf, still would not follow Him. The final straw was their refusal to believe Joshua and Caleb.

Well the text says,
rather than edit war, perhaps some expert interpretation as to what the ten times refers to would clarify this discussion.

The question will arise:

• Who is this Wikipedia that I accuse of these things?

But nobody has any difficulty understanding what it means to blame or credit the W Administration, the X Corporation, the Y Generation, or the Nation of Z for this, that, or the other thing. There is no implication that every individual who participates in W, X, Y, or Z is fully aligned with the general direction of the collective in question. But everyone understands what it means to speak of the aggregate disposition and the effective impact of the mass activity, and everyone understands that the overall responsibility for that disposition and that impact can be attributed, one way or another, to its participants.

If you're going to talk about collective objects like "The Wikipedia Community" and pervasive influences like "The Wikipedia Culture", then you have already implicated yourself in the need to predicate qualities of them.

So let us not waste time quibbling about the very possibility of that.

Jonny

Number one on the list should be

[*] Policy

That alphabetical I B
R the wages of OCD.

Jonny

See this quotation: I think that makes it clear that the 40 years was punishment for their despair after the return of the spies.

Let me parse this briefly; v.34 refers to forty years wandering, not thier carcases falling in the wilderness. At the end of forty years, Joshua led a group over Jordan, however those that did provoke, thier carcases fell in the wilderness (and we can presume thier wanderings extended past forty years).

I don't think we can presume any such thing. After 40 years, they were all dead (except for Joshua and Caleb), and Joshua then led those who had been too young to be the subject of the punishment (or had been born since) over the Jordan. There is no suggestion that anyone was left in the wilderness.

Possibly so; we will investigate these claims. Also, the "ten times" warrants explaination.

No doubt some of my readers will have lost count of the lost generations since their own lost its way, others, more gratefully, will be insufficiently familiar with the Wages of Wikipedia to know what I mean by "pathologically diss-socialized internet skinheads". Thus we can thank the usual suspects, Nobs and Guy, decapitalized or otherwise, whose little skit has given a name and a local habitation to that hapless theme. No doubt it strikes some secret chord in their hearts, as it does with us all, no doubt.

But, ever faithful, I will collect my manna, my spirit, my wits and continue, in this waste land, or another ...

Jonny

Well is you time in WR a period of cleansing, or spirit of rebellion, that's seems to be the question....

That all depends : Cleansing, catharsis, purging of what? Rebellion for and against what?

Jonny